


Winning the Trade

by psocoptera



Series: Restricted Free Agents [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Kink Negotiation, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, sexual fantasies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:19:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22457098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: In which the question of threesomes is revisited.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Shitty Knight/Jack Zimmermann
Series: Restricted Free Agents [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/303933
Comments: 9
Kudos: 94





	Winning the Trade

**Author's Note:**

> I know this series was last heard from in 2015, but I always wanted to do one more bit to wrap it up. Some of this was written years ago and some recently.
> 
> Content notes: discussion of a past relationship of Jack's, unnamed but it's pretty clear who; drinking and drunkenness; light/minor dom/sub. This continues to be a series where people talk about sex but don't have it during the story.

Bitty has this.

He is admittedly drunk and the angles of the Bananagram tiles increasingly don't seem to be right angles, but his reflexes are still good, stacking up more tiles quickly to stabilize the wobbles underneath, and it's working, his tower is totally the tallest. Better than Jack's, who is working methodically, doubling up his tiles for stability at the expense of height, or Lardo, who seems very concerned about symmetry or something. Just a handful left...

"D'ya ever think about that time we were both inside Lardo?" Shitty says, out of nowhere. 

Tiles clatter. Apparently nobody was ready for that comment and they all flinch when surprised, because all three of Bitty, Lardo, and Jack have knocked down their towers. Shitty, whose tower was a mess but is now the tallest left standing, looks smug.

"Bro," Lardo says.

"We talked about bringing it up," Shitty says.

"That was still cheating," Lardo says. "Dirty dirty cheating."

"Not cheating," Bitty announces. This seems important to re-establish. "Not cheating if I _told_ him to."

Heads swivel and they all look at him; Lardo, for some reason, reaches across the coffee table to ruffle his hair. Jack puts his hand on his shoulder.

"I'm going to get this one home," Jack says. "I think we should all be sober if you actually want to talk about this." He smiles when he says it, so Bitty knows he's not upset, but he also knows Jack _is_ sober, and it seems a little harsh to not let Shitty talk. Like, nobody's going to sign any contracts, or _do_ anything tonight.

"Liquid courage is a thing," he tries to point out, but Jack is already wrestling him up from the floor (he's not resisting, he's just comfortable down there), and Lardo is Bananagramming something to Shitty that Bitty can't read upside down at this angle but is almost certainly dirty judging by Shitty's reaction.

Jack gets Bitty down the stairs, and into his car, and then he ends up dozing a little, just listening to the noise of the road and feeling Jack's warm, solid presence at the wheel. After awhile, he wakes up a little - it's cooler in the car than in Shitty's apartment - and finds the inevitable water bottle in the center console and takes a long drink.

Jack glances over just enough to catch Bitty's eye before looking back at the road.

"I got a save-the-date for a wedding," Jack says quietly. "Todd and Kristina. Didn't recognize the last name, but I've played with a lot of people. I don't always... there are lots of reasons I might not remember."

"I sure couldn't name every kid who was ever in my class," Bitty agrees. (Even still fuzzy-headed, he's not going to mention anything about pills.)

"My father taught me to study my old rosters, that since people will remember me, they'll expect me to remember them. I put them all in a file at one point, so I searched that, but I couldn't find a Todd. And then I get a text message from a number I don't recognize, did I get an invite to Krissy's wedding, am I going, and I realize I've been trying to remember the wrong person."

Bitty waits.

"She was somebody's sister," Jack says. "She was... one of the girls."

That doesn't mean anything to Bitty at first... of course someone's sister was a girl... and then it clicks.

"Ohhh," he says. "The _threesome_ girls." Whoops, he wasn't going to say that part out loud. He's possibly still kind of drunk. "Izzat normal to invite your, your ex-threesome person to your wedding?"

Jack snorts. "My mystery texter went on to say that I would be 'getting a lot of invites now that I was in the show' and 'people think you're rude if it's too single dollar-sign or too dollar-sign dollar-sign dollar-sign dollar-sign dollar-sign', which a further text explained was 'the gift i mean'."

Bitty cracks up somewhere in the dollar-signs... Jack dryly quoting text-speak is hilarious - but then stops when he realizes the obvious.

"Was it _him_?" he asks. "How'd he even get your number?"

"How'd Krissy get my address," Jack says philosophically. "People in common, I guess."

"Are you gonna _go_?" Bitty asks.

"No," Jack says immediately. "No, I'll... I'll send something."

"What do you even give someone in that situation," Bitty wonders. "Gonna text back?"

"I guess? At least so he knows not to expect me." A pause. "I wonder if he's going. Maybe they've kept in touch." Another pause. "I've hardly thought about her."

Bitty is drowsy, and maybe that's why what occurs to him seems obvious: "You do think about Lardo, though. That's why it bothered you when Shitty implied they'd be up for a repeat, because you'd want to, and if they want to, it could actually happen, huh."

"I don't want to," Jack says.

"But you do think about it," Bitty says. "Wait, it's _okay_ if you want to, you know that, right?"

No answer from the other side of the car.

"They _asked_ you to have sex with them, they're not gonna mind you being into it," Bitty tries.

"I don't understand why _you_ don't mind," Jack says, low and tense.

"I still think about people besides you," Bitty says reasonably, trying to lighten the tension. "Like Stéphane Lambiel fucking m-"

"Fucking you on the podium, yes, you've said," Jack says, with an air of this not being even slightly shocking any more. "But, Bits, no offense, but you're not likely to ever even meet Stéphane Lambiel."

"An' if I did we wouldn't be fucking on the podium, no, I know," Bitty says. "Obviously." The conversation has gotten slightly derailed. "But when I get scared about you leaving me for someone better it's not for Shitty _or_ Lardo, like I'm pretty sure that would have... happened? already? if it was going to happen?"

"I'm not leaving you for anybody and no one could be better," Jack says, which Bitty thinks proves his original point pretty well. "But that's not the point. We made a deal, and then I broke it."

Oh. This again. "We made a deal, and then we settled that deal, so if we made another deal it would be a new deal without any baggage of any previous deals," Bitty says, and it sounds like airtight logic to him, but he can practically see the wheels and conveyor belts in Jack's head carrying his words away for dismissal. Bitty is drunk, or he's too nice, or fair play always takes precedence, or Jack is just too stubborn to change horses in the middle of the stream even when the stream is invitingly parting itself for his horse-changing convenience.

"Ask me again when I'm not drunk," Bitty says, the only part of any of that he can easily do anything about. "You'll see."

*

_BKnight  
don't want to treat you as Jack's sex secretary  
unless you're into being Jack's sex secretary  
but are you guys actually open to further 2 on 1  
no pressure, feel free to ignore  
but Lardo has ideas_

_Eric  
oh my_

*

It takes a little while for it to come up again - Bitty and Jack don't get time alone that often, and when they do, there are so many other things to do than talk. It's not Bitty's fault that Jack is very large, and so many parts of him need kisses. But, eventually, they're in Jack's car again, and Bitty hasn't been drinking, and there's that text from Shitty, and Bitty isn't quite sure where the line is between pushing and letting stew, but he thinks it's probably time to check in.

"Did you RSVP to that wedding?" he starts.

"Yeah," Jack says. "And to, uh. He just said 'ok thx'. So I don't know if he's going. It still seems weird to me."

"Do you think it would be weird for you at Shitty and Lardo's wedding? I mean, assuming they stay together, and, you know. Have one."

Jack thinks about that for a minute. "I'm not sure I'm going explain this right," he says. Bitty makes an encouraging noise. "They're my best friends who aren't you," Jack says, "So of course I would be there, and I guess the, uh, the threesome is just sort of extra to that. The other times, before, the girls weren't, we weren't anything else... I know that sounds pretty bad."

"I have heard of hookups," Bitty says. "No, I think that makes sense."

"My mother told me that when she was at Samwell it seemed like everyone in the drama department dated everyone else," Jack says. Bitty isn't quite following. "She had some advice about getting along with, um, exes. It was pretty good."

Bitty waits, but Jack doesn't seem to have more to say about that, such as for instance what this advice had consisted of. Bitty isn't sure now why he had decided to start this conversation by bringing up the wedding, instead of jumping straight to the part about sex, except that it's awkward to bring something like that up out of the blue when he can't even blame intoxication. Still, he'd read once in some sex-advice column that if you couldn't talk about it, you shouldn't be doing it, so he's going to have to grit his teeth.

"The night we played Bananagrams at Shitty's," he starts, staring forward at the car in front of them and not over at Jack. "I meant what I said. I mean, I still mean it. I mean, it's okay with me if, um. I've heard Lardo has ideas."

Jack is quiet, and Bitty risks a look over. Jack isn't particularly frowning, or anything, except to the extent that he always makes a serious concentrating face when he's driving in traffic.

"Were you talking about it?" Jack finally asks. "Lardo's ideas, I mean." 

They've had enough phone sex for Bitty to immediately recognize the tone of his voice - this is Jack trying to feel out if Bitty is trying to start something. Bitty hadn't meant it that way at all; he had been thinking about it as an awkward conversation, not a sexy conversation, not that those never overlapped, or he didn't sometimes shoot for one and end up with the other one. Usually the other way around, though. But if Jack is willing to play - if Jack is, maybe, a little turned on by the idea of Bitty and Lardo sitting around brainstorming sex plans - 

"Not really," Bitty says. "But I bet she's thought of some good ones."

He's not sure where he's going with that, but the voice is right. He's playing too, if Jack is. Jack's next line is "yeah?" or something like that, and then Bitty is going to have to come up with something to say, but maybe he can stall by recapping the story so far, as it were...

Jack, though, says "hrm" in a discouraging way, and falls quiet again.

"Sorry," he says, after a moment. "That didn't really... I was fishing for you talking about something _you_ were into, and then it seemed like it was going to turn into you coming up with something for _me_."

"Hmph," Bitty says. "Oh, you're not wrong," he adds, because Jack looks a little worried. "But what's wrong with that?"

Jack reaches across the seat to find Bitty's hand, squeezing it before he puts his hand back on the wheel. "I don't not appreciate it," he says. "But. Hm. This is complicated."

Bitty looks through the windshield at the tail lights in front of them. "I'd say we have some time."

Jack makes another one of those "hrm" noises, but it might just be annoyance with the traffic.

"I liked doing that for Lardo," Jack says, voice low. "But I also really liked you trading me. It was this complicated thing we were doing because you were excited about it. And then somehow it stopped being about you, and it was just about me, and them." He winces a little. "Not somehow," he corrects. "Because I kicked you out of it."

"Excuse you, I recused myself," Bitty says, not entirely sure whether he's using that word right.

"Maybe I don't want you to recuse yourself," Jack says. "The threesomes, the girls, I thought for a long time we had - used them. Not like pressure, but like... carelessness. But I never really talked to them, and so, I don't know. Maybe it was like with Lardo, maybe they thought they were getting _us_ to do something."

"I can personally vouch for the fantasy of getting banged by two hockey players," Bitty says.

Jack looks over at him. "So would you tell me more about that?"

"You mean, like, details?" It sounds like it should be a sexy question, but Jack's voice isn't right for that, and Bitty's comes out a little squeaky in response.

"Or just... what it is about it," Jack says, like he's asking Bitty to expound on butter crusts and not something he's repeatedly masturbated about.

"I guess it's a bucket list thing?" Bitty tries. He's described fantasies for Jack before, but usually after a drink or two, and with the understanding that everyone either has their hand in their pants or is about to. The middle lane of 495 eastbound does not encourage the same disinhibition.

"There are all kinds of things you could put on a bucket list," Jack says. "But if you don't want to talk about it - "

Bitty feels the sting of hypocrisy. He had totally been ready to cater to _Jack's_ kinks. He can survive digging a little into his own.

"We can talk about it," he says. "Let me think for a minute."

Jack makes an agreeable noise, and Bitty closes his eyes and puts himself on his hands and knees between large, faceless men, doing what they always do in this scenario. He'd had this fantasy before he'd ever actually done either of those things, but it hasn't changed much, except that now he can call up the specific physical sensations of both, which makes both of the men Jack, which is impossible, but compelling.

"I guess some of it is the validation," Bitty says, opening his eyes. He's turned on from thinking about it, which makes it easier to start talking, back in the familiarity of sexy-talk even if it isn't really. "If I could score _two_ jocks, then I would definitely be, you know, all that. Except I guess you count as at least two jocks, because if I could do it with two of you, that would be even better."

He glances over at Jack, who looks abstracted. "Are you doing mental math about whether you actually count as two jocks?"

"No," Jack says unconvincingly. "Uh. So it's not a variety thing?"

Bitty wrinkles his nose. "I don't think so," he says. "More like me wanting to be the kind of person who would even do something like that?" That's sort of embarrassing to admit, but it turns out it's harder to be embarrassed when you suspect your boyfriend was just factoring advanced hockey stats into whether he scores double over a baseline jock on sexual desirability.

"That makes sense," Jack says. "I do see you that way, you know. Like you could do all kinds of things if I wasn't holding you back."

"It's dumb to say you're holding me back when everything I have done has been with you," Bitty snaps. "Why won't you listen to me, _I don't mind_."

"Sorry," Jack says. "I'm trying to listen. That was unhelpful, I'm sorry." He takes an audible breath, and Bitty can see his hands are tight on the wheel.

Bitty puts his hand on Jack's arm. "It's okay," he says.

Jack relaxes his grip, and smiles quickly at Bitty.

"So," Jack says. "Adventure."

"I guess," Bitty says. He tries to recapture the fantasy again. Jack and Shitty, this time, in Bitty's room in the Haus, everyone getting naked.

"I liked when we were planning it," he says slowly. "I liked the anticipation. I mean, I'm always looking forward to, uh, seeing you, when you visit, or I visit you, but I liked how specific it was." He taps his index fingers together, an echo of that first photo with Lardo, realizes he's doing it, and stops. "It seemed like it might be... a lot, but if everyone knew the plan, there would be... momentum. I'm not sure if that counts as adventure or not."

"It counts as hot," Jack says, voice rough. Bitty isn't sure he's explaining well, how he doesn't imagine being unable to stop, just being able to be carried along by it, pushed a little bit past what was easy. But he's apparently explaining well enough for Jack.

"I think we could do something with that," Jack adds, and Bitty has to squirm in his seat a little, reacting.

*

Pandemic turns out not to work very well as a drinking game, but Bitty's thematic blue, red, and yellow cocktails are a hit with Shitty and Lardo. (Everyone agrees the charcoal lemonade in the black one is a little weird.) Jack experiments with pineapple juice in his cranberry juice and has a hilarious argument with Shitty about the suitability of cooperative board games for strip versions that leaves Bitty and Lardo cracking each other up whispering "but it has to work as a game!" to each other.

"So when are we going to get you to put these theories into practice," Shitty asks at the end, waggling his eyebrows at Jack.

"Depends on if we're just stripping or something else," Jack says, without missing a beat. Lardo elbows Bitty and there is an exchange of meaningful glances. Whether there's going to be any further threesome activity - or threesome activity involving Bitty at all - is an ongoing conversation between him and Jack. But it can be a conversation they talk about with Shitty and Lardo too.

But not tonight. It's still pretty early, but Shitty has reading he needs to finish, which is a great excuse for Jack and Bitty to leave before it gets too late.

They chat a little in the car on the way down to Providence - Bitty is caught up on his own reading, for once. Has a couple of paper topics he's thinking about. He kept an eye on his drinking tonight, at Jack's request, poured his cocktails light and sipped when he had to drink, so he feels pretty clearheaded. Possibly even safe to drive, with all the pie they also ate, not that he needs to, or would suggest it. It's just the same condition he would be in if they were driving towards Shitty's apartment for this rather than away, so it helps it feel similar.

He can't know for sure what that anticipation would feel like, if it would feel like the clock counting down to a puck drop, like the oven timer counting down on a new pie. What he feels now feels like a third guest in the car with them, like a balloon that starts small but inflates bigger and bigger the closer they get to Providence, filling up the car until it's squeezing out everything else, pressing Bitty back against the back of his seat, pressing his chitchat back into his mouth. Jack seems content to drive along in mutual quiet; only the darkness of his eyes, when he looks over at Bitty, show that he's anticipating too.

They park in Jack's space, and Bitty grabs his bag. There's no one else in the elevator, and Jack takes Bitty's hand and rubs his thumb in a circle on Bitty's palm. Bitty doesn't know the exact details of what Jack has planned, just the general outline, just that he wants to try something and how Bitty might want to be ready.

Bitty leaves his bag and his coat and his shoes in the entryway and lets Jack tow him gently towards the bedroom. Jack stops at the doorway, like he's nervous, maybe, and Bitty pulls him down into a kiss, and then Jack crowds him back against the wall and keeps kissing him until they're both breathing hard.

They move for the doorknob at the same time, and end up with Bitty's hand under Jack's, both laughing a little.

The assemblage that Jack has prepared has more items than Bitty would have thought of - there's a gym mat, for their knees, Bitty realizes, because apparently they're going to do this on the floor. That's an extra twist of heat in his stomach. Lube, and towels. The principal object has a vaguely comical suction cup, and is, to Bitty's eye, a close match to Jack for size.

"I hope you're ready for this," Jack says from behind him, quiet and close to Bitty's ear, hands on his shoulders. "I kept picturing it, all day, seeing you like this. You're going to be so good, and so gorgeous."

Bitty shudders, from his head to his toes and all down his spine, and lets Jack push him forward.

**Author's Note:**

> _BKnight  
>  so what did Jack get them  
> wait  
> a sandwich press  
> please tell me he got them a panini press  
> get it  
> sandwiches_


End file.
